The 1912 speculator's handbook

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

I got acquainted with an entertaining manual for speculators of the 1912 edition. And I cannot but quote some of the most entertaining passages in order, on the one hand, to show our history a little more vividly, and, on the other, to see that some questions have not lost their relevance even after 105 years.

In any case, both the ideology of such professional speculators and the psychology of gamblers have certainly remained the same. People are people. I'll start with assessing the creditworthiness and financial stability of the Republic of Ingushetia. Let me remind you that this is the opinion of a stock speculator, not a socialist.

The exchange is a completely international institution, and Russia, with its unusually huge state debt, wholly - or almost entirely - placed abroad, in foreign, foreign hands - is more than any other country connected with the movement of exchange rates and with the state of the money market. not at home, but in Paris, Berlin, London.

Evaluation of the results of the wielding of the invisible hand.

In modern industrial and economic life, especially in Russia, the law of supply and demand, i.e., in other words, the result of free competition, extremely constrained in his manifestation by endless restrictions that enmesh Russian economic and socio-political life in general … However, his strength is so great and the area of relations he regulates is so vast that, despite all these restrictions and constraints, he also works with us, leading now to overproduction, then to a shortage of certain goods.

Here is an excerpt about psychology, which allows professional speculators and bankers to earn, as they would say now, on "suckers".

However, a common type of public speculator is a person who has a more or less large sum of money, with which he buys a security that should rise in order to sell it at that moment. This intention and vague knowledge of several exchange terms - this is the entire stock of his information at the moment when he starts the exchange game; the entire calculation, the entire complexity of exchange combinations is replaced by hope to win because others have won, "Made themselves a millionth fortune in two days."

As a rule, such hopes end in the loss of capital; if there are many such losses, then in the press and society begin hypocritical and very bad, further vile tone of complaint, calls to "curb" the stock exchange, the requirements of legislative, or even just administrative prohibitions, the closure of access to the stock exchange and similar restrictive and prohibitive orders of the authorities. Usually such complaints, demands and accusations of the stock exchange and bankers come from the losers, who had dreamed of making a million-dollar fortune the day before. Others sympathize with them, pity them, also shout about temptations, about corruption. It is clearly seen that the moral foundations of all such speculators are as insignificant as their financial knowledge and also deserve sympathy, as, for example, a person deserves it. attacking another in the hope of coping with him, but after making sure of the superiority of his strength, he begins to call for help and shout that he was robbed.

Good advice to Buratins hoping for all sorts of investment funds and trust management.

Meanwhile, these players, who are waiting for an increase in the securities they have bought, do not even suspect that by placing them on the current account, they are already lowering the rates, that is, lowering them, as a rule, since, as an exception, this bank may be interested in increasing the values in his hands as a deposit. A banker, a professional speculator, in general, a person who is constantly and clearly interested in the exchange focuses all his attention on futures transactions, those securities that he received in deposit serve him only as a cover, providing him with the opportunity to make transactions more risky - and nothing more. Meanwhile, anyone who has deposited his securities in the account is sure that from now on his interest and the interest of the banker are inextricably linked and both of them will not wait for the right moment to increase in order to sell.

And once again about the oppression of international finance capital.

Russian state funds emigrated to the west - one of the reigns considered to be the most national - Alexander III - was characterized by the complete subordination of financial, monetary and state settlements to foreign financiers, the largest names of which are represented by Jews. True, from this submission not only did not result in any damage to Russian national political and economic interests, but, on the contrary, over the entire past century they were not protected as carefully as it was from the moment of rallying of foreign and Russian markets.

As we know from history, in two years all this intense speculative life will end for many years.